Korean Winter

by Griff Hosker

  I shook my head, “It is too far-fetched to make into a film.”

  He closed the door and I lit my pipe.

  The Colonel beamed, “Well, it looks like this war is almost over. The 1st Marine Division and the 1st Cavalry Division are driving for the border. The 8th Cavalry is at the Chosin Reservoir already! That is just a hop and a jump from China.”

  I said nothing but poked a match into the ash in my pipe to loosen the fibres beneath.

  My silence was eloquent, “Major, I take it you do not agree?”

  “Sir, the last thing you need is for the Chinese to become aggressive. There was a Russian MiG which strafed us. The Russians provided advisers and the aeroplane I brought back was Chinese. The tank we destroyed was Chinese. If they come over the border, sir, they will come mob-handed!”

  He smiled, “I understand what you are saying but this is way above our pay grades. I think it is a case of bluff and double bluff. We have the threat of the atomic bomb. The Chinese will sue for peace and we will have a unified Korea.”

  “And General MacArthur will go home a hero.” I could not keep my words neutral. I knew I had gone too far from the Colonel’s reaction. The general was something of an icon amongst the American military. I had met him. He was a competent general but he an ego the size of Texas. “I am sorry sir, that was uncalled for. I have had no sleep for forty-eight hours and most of my men are still too far away for me to be happy about it.”

  The Colonel smiled, “You are quite right and I understand. Here let us have a glass of rye. This is a fifteen-year-old Maker’s Mark. I think you will enjoy it.” He poured us a generous glass each and said, “Here is to an early end to the war and home for Christmas.”

  We echoed his sentiments but I knew that we would still be in Korea come Christmas.

  It was lunchtime by the time we had finished. There was much to tell him, especially about the treatment of prisoners of war. Sergeant Houlihan typed it up and I signed it. No amendments were necessary. Captain Warwick had managed to acquire a jeep and he gave me a lift back to the camp. The Colonel offered me lunch but I was exhausted and I wanted to give my men the good news about the rest of the team.

  “Well, Captain, is your work done now? Do you move on now that this mission is over?”

  “I am not sure. I think I am being moved to Pyongyang but I shall miss working with you chaps.”

  “You hardly know us!”

  “You would be surprised. Talking to Ashcroft on the radio showed me the regard your men have for you. You are almost a lucky charm. Even when you were surrounded and attacked by the Russian aeroplane, Ashcroft still believed that you would get them out of there and he was right. You are a reservist and yet you have such a professional attitude that it astounds me.”

  “Thank you for that, Captain, but it is down to my mother and father. They brought me up this way. I just hope that the next generation is brought up in the same fashion.”

  None of the men had gone to bed and they were all outside the tents, despite the cold. They huddled in their greatcoats and smoked. When the Captain pulled up, they surrounded us, “Well, sir?”

  “They are safe and the Major is being airlifted to a hospital here in Seoul!”

  They all cheered and the Captain, as he put the jeep into gear, shook his head, “I will never experience this sort of esprit de corps.”

  I was not sure if he was talking to me or himself but I said, “You, will, at least, survive the war. Take that, Captain. We have chosen our route and we can’t go back now, even if we wanted to. This is our fate and we have to live with it.”

  It took two days for the men to reach us. The 1st Middlesex had rejoined their own regiment and the men who were still injured and wounded were hospitalized. For the rest, it was a homecoming like VE day. Commandos old and new greeted each other like old friends. The fourteen or so hours we had spent in Fort Zinderneuf had been enough. They were one unit. I had been to the American PX to buy some American whisky. I had two bottles for the enlisted men, one for the NCOs and one for the Lieutenant and myself. We would not drink it all but whatever was left I would give to the enlisted men.

  We sat outside our tents with snow falling. We had found two oil drums and they made a good fire. With Marine Harris back we had our singer and he regaled us with Al Jolson songs. Jake and I said little. We listened to the men as they bantered and spoke of the battle of Sunchon. We had won and done so against the odds. Our two escapes had been quite remarkable and we knew that the legend would grow with the telling. Many other units had heard of our escape and it gave hope. If you were trapped then there was a chance that you could survive. We were living proof.

  Jake tapped my glass, “Cheers sir.”

  I said, “Cheers!” and raised my eyebrows.

  He laughed, “What must you have thought of me when I first arrived. What a pompous little man I was. That man could not have sailed a barge down an enemy-infested river. It was you and the Sergeant Major who made it possible.”

  “Sergeant Majors have been doing that since Waterloo. You just needed time to find yourself.”

  “Don’t do yourself a disservice, sir. You know how to lead and that is a rare skill. I can see that. Now that it is almost over what will you do next? Stay in or go back home?”

  “Jake, this is not over. I will go home when it is and that will not be for some time.”

  He nodded and sipped the whisky. “I hope the Major is alright. He is one tough Commando!”

  “They all are but I hope he can cope with the loss of a leg. He is lucky to be alive but he lived for the Commandos. He will have to find something else.”

  “It is in your blood though, sir. I mean, you will go back to your business but this is part of you, isn’t it? You can’t just shed it like an old uniform.”

  I laughed, “You suddenly got wise, Lieutenant! You are right but this little war has taught me that it will be my last one. I am getting slow; at Sunchon I missed things that five years ago I would have seen. This is a young man’s game. It is your time. This will be my last war and I hope that you and the Colonel are right and that it is over but I fear it is not!”

  The Lieutenant could not handle his whisky and a short time later he began to snore. Sergeant Major Thorpe and I put him to bed. When we emerged from the tent the Sergeant Major said, “Right lads, better think about hitting your beds.”

  I threw the bottle with the remains of the whisky I had been drinking with Jake to Rafe Smith, “Finish this off and then bed. No run in the morning but the day after…”

  Rafe adeptly caught the bottle and said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Ken Thorpe said, “The lads did well, sir when we came south and the Lieutenant, well he is a different bloke now from the one who joined us a short time ago.”

  “Did you have much trouble?”

  “They had a couple of manned bridges and we were fired at but the Lieutenant held his nerve and we suffered no casualties. To be honest we were all more worried about you. We had escaped but we thought you were in the bag. If we hadn’t had the Major and the other wounded, I think that the lads would have landed and come back for you.”

  I gave the Sergeant Major a stern look, “But you and the Lieutenant would have stopped them, right?”

  He chuckled, “Probably, sir, but it did not come to that so we will never know, sir. What are the orders for tomorrow?”

  The snow had begun to fall again. It made me think about the next weeks leading up to Christmas. The Americans thought that the majority of the troops would be home by Christmas. We had to make plans for a longer stay. “We can’t live in tents over winter. I will see the Colonel tomorrow. What say we use local buildings in Seoul? I mean there must be empty buildings and I would prefer something sturdier than tents especially in a Korean winter.”

  “A good idea, sir. I mean this American food is all very well but the lads have been asking for Shepherd’s Pie and Bangers and Mash. They like cooking for themselves.”
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br />   “And we had better get winter uniforms for Sergeant Grant and the other lads we recovered. We need to check for mail. It seems like weeks since we had any and letters from home will lift the spirits of the lads.”

  “Will do. It isn’t all about fighting is it sir?”

  “No indeed.”

  I had passed the point of sleep. The whisky had if anything, woken me up and so I went to the tent and, after ensuring that Jake was covered by blankets and had a bucket close to his head, I wrote a letter to Susan. When I had finished then I was ready for bed and I slept. My dreams were haunted by the faces of the men killed by the MiG. Allenby’s injury had meant he was on the machine gun and not Bates. Bates had survived and Allenby had not. Such were the threads of our lives which determined life and death. The dreams were a warning to me.

  I rose late, woken by the sound of retching from the Lieutenant’s bunk into the bucket. I stood, “Are you alright, Jake?”

  “Yes, sir, sorry, sir. I am not much of a drinker.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It was a celebration.” I grabbed my towel and coat. “I will go and take a shower. Listen, the Sergeant Major and I were talking last night. Winter is not the time to be in a tent. I will see the Colonel. If we can’t get accommodation here, we will see about renting digs in the town. You might as well come with me to the meeting. It will be good experience for you.”

  I then sat down to write the letters to the families of the men who died. It would not have been right to do it while drinking. This needed sober reflection and the correct choice of words. That done I stepped out into a white world and a cold one at that. Sergeant Grant was feeding wood into the oil drums and Sergeant Major Thorpe and the other NCOs were drinking tea, “Morning sir!”

  “Morning lads.”

  Lance Corporal Pike shouted, “If it stays like this, sir, we will have a White Christmas in a few weeks’ time!”

  “I always think that Christmas cards are the best place for snow.”

  After I had showered, dressed and breakfasted, Jake and I went to the admin office. Sergeant Houlihan was on duty and he shook his head when I asked if the Colonel was available. “Sorry, sir. There is a big push up north and he is with the other senior officers planning what to do when we have the whole of Korea. It looks like you have done with fighting, sir. I heard the Colonel saying that he doubted your specialist skills would be needed again. You could well be home for Christmas.” He also told me that all the accommodation was being used. I would find something in the town.

  I doubted it but we left the office anyway and headed for the motor pool. I asked the duty sergeant for a jeep but he shook his head, “Sorry, sir. Your Captain Warwick took my last jeep to the airfield yesterday. He was on his way north. We will have to wait until someone brings it back.”

  I could not sit around and twiddle my thumbs. The Sergeant Major had set an itch in my head and so Jake and I wrapped up in our greatcoats and left the camp to walk into town. When Seoul had fallen to the North Koreans there had been much damage to the town. We had driven up the road many times but I had not looked closely at the buildings. Most of the buildings within forty yards of the main gates had been demolished by the Americans but beyond that, they had been left, no matter what their condition. I knew that when the war ended there would need to be a great deal of work to remedy the damage done. The buildings were all empty. The first three we looked at looked structurally unsound but then we came to a block which had obviously been shops and restaurants. The doors hung from them; that was blast damage and snow had blown inside but when we entered the first one, a food shop, I saw that although the windows had been blown in the walls were sound. We went up the stairs and saw that there were two rooms and they had been the bedrooms of the family who lived there. We went out of the back where there was a yard which was protected by a wall. Looking down the row of houses and businesses we could see that the roof had been damaged in only one place and there were even some windows remaining at the rear while at the front the shattered windows could be boarded up.

  “If the other shops are in the same condition this might well suit, Lieutenant. We are close enough to the compound and the base. I think this might do nicely!”

  He looked dubious, “It would take a lot of work, sir!”

  “And that is precisely what the lads need.” I did not want bored Marines.

  We found four habitable dwellings. One had been a café of some kind and had a kitchen. Like all Korean kitchens, it used large wood-burning stoves. There was no electricity but then again, we had none in the tents. If the Colonel agreed we would move in! After we had assessed the buildings we headed back to the base. The Colonel was still busy when we returned to the office and I told Sergeant Houlihan what we intended.

  “Sir, I can get you a Quonset hut! You don’t need to move into a bomb site!” I could tell that he was appalled at the thought.

  “Sergeant, as much as we enjoy your hospitality my men are used to fending for themselves. I will just need to get in touch with British Headquarters to arrange the funding. I do not think it will be a problem. Asking is a courtesy really.”

  He shook his head, “Sir, I know you are our allies but I sometimes understand the Koreans more than I understand you guys. No offence, sir!”

  “And none taken.”

  We returned to the camp and I gathered the NCOs to explain what I intended. Had there been a wave of disapproval then I might have reconsidered but they were overwhelmingly in favour of it. Lance Corporal Lake rubbed his hands, “You know, sir, when the 19th Infantry bugged out a couple of weeks ago they left a generator. It is still there, covered with a tarpaulin. I am sure we could find it a good home!”

  I adopted a blank expression, “You know, Lake, that as senior British officer on this camp, I could not possibly condone such behaviour. Of course, if I know nothing about it then it becomes an act of God!”

  He tapped his nose, “Righto, sir. Message received and understood!”

  “First things first; Sergeant Major Thorpe, I suggest you take the men to the building and begin to clean it out. We may be squatting but we do have standards.”

  “Sir!”

  “And the Lieutenant and I will see about getting some supplies until HQ can contribute to our housekeeping.”

  I took the Lieutenant to the canteen. I did not see the duty officer, instead, I found the Master Sergeant who was in charge of cooking. “I just came to thank you, Master Sergeant, for all the fine food you have served us.”

  “You are leaving, sir? You just got back from your last raid.”

  “We are not going far. We have decided we would like solid walls around us for the winter. We will be fending for ourselves.”

  He smiled, “Then you could still come here for your meals, sir.”

  “True, but we will still require food and other supplies. I suppose we could go to the Seoul market.”

  I saw the expression on his face; like most enlisted men he mistrusted local markets. “Sir, let me give you some basics!” He turned, “Allen, fetch a side of Canadian bacon.” He smiled, “We got this in for you guys anyway. A tray of bread, the canisters of tea we bought in and a box of dried milk and eggs.” He smiled, “That should keep you going for a while sir and I will find some fresh food. If you send your guys along, later on, we will have it all ready for you.”

  “Thank you, Master Sergeant.”

  He wagged a playful finger at me, “But you come along for dinner tonight, sir. We have some porterhouse steaks just flown in and in a week or so we have our Thanksgiving dinner! You guys will enjoy that: turkey, honeyed yams, sweetcorn and pumpkin pie!”

  “I look forward to it and thank you, Master Sergeant.”

  “Sir, after the two missions you guys pulled off, it is the least we could do.”

  As we headed back to our tents Jake shook his head, “Where did you learn to do that sir? It isn’t in the manual.”

  “Most of the useful stuff isn’t. Remember w
hen you were training and you were dumped somewhere to find your way back home?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is the same thing. You improvise. I think this move will be good for the section. It will make us all feel more like British soldiers. Start to pack away your gear and I will go and get on the radio to Headquarters.”

  I was lucky. When I managed to get through to someone it was a lowly lieutenant and he was a little intimidated by me. He agreed to send the funds to pay for our food as well as more ammunition for the Lee Enfields and Mills bombs. As he was so acquiescent, I pushed my luck. “Those four Bren guns we requisitioned have still to arrive.”

  “Sorry sir, I will expedite them immediately.”

  Sadly, my request for our back mail was not granted as there was some sort of issue at the British end but I felt pleased with what I had achieved. By the time I reached our tent, the Lieutenant had packed all of his gear. “I will just pop down to the new quarters, sir, and give the lads a hand.”

  I smiled. He was now one of the lads and that was a massive improvement in the young officer who had come to us. Before I packed, I filled my pipe and read the letter I had written to Susan. I was happy with it. Sometimes, especially when I had been drinking, I tended to be a little maudlin and sentimental. I was pleased that I had not. I sealed the letter. I would post it before I joined my men. Then I packed all of my gear.

  By the time I headed to the new quarters it was noon. I saw a great deal of rubbish outside the buildings. The men had been busy. I saw Haynes and Collins refitting the doors and Carter and Campbell were boarding up the broken windows. The snow had turned to sleet and it would be cold in the buildings. I saw that Lake had the generator rigged up and he was frowning. “A problem, Lake?”

  “We will need fuel, sir! Leave it to me and Batesy, we will sort something out.”

  I shook my head, the only fuel they could obtain would be from the Americans and that meant stealing! I watched the men as they busied themselves. We had our own cots and bedding but we would need food to augment that which the Americans had provided. I waved over the Sergeant Major, “Have some men go to the canteen. The Master Sergeant has some supplies for us.”